14th April 2018: Are you sitting comfortably?

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Saturday 14th 50F, 10C, grey overcast but almost calm. With the wind turbines standing still. Lots of birds being birds on my walk. It is pleasant not to have to fight a gale.

I forgot to mention that I put the Brooks B17 'Special' saddle back on now the weather has improved. That was a serious mistake! It hurt like hell as I seemed to be sitting on bits of me which suddenly hurt. Bits which haven't hurt at all while riding on the Vetta SL MTB [whatever.]

So now I am right back to square one. I need a less tatty saddle than the old Vetta which is getting very scruffy around the edges. None of the other saddles I've tried work for me. The Brooks C17 rubber jobby was a total disaster! It took days to recover from the damage it did on a few short rides. Hard as rocks, all thanks to the GRP reinforcement needed to cope with foolish, lifetime guarantees and 500lb 'weekend warriors' across The Pond!

I have put the Vetta back on in the absence of any alternative choice. I could try recovering it with new vinyl. There are several useful descriptions online. Discussions about the breathability of leather versus vinyl is rather foolish given the impermeability of the plastic carcass and foam underlays of "artificial" saddles.

Marine, upholstery vinyl gets a good press online for recovering bicycle saddles. Though forum members have tried all sorts of materials with reasonable success. I can still remember the pain of owning a Unica Nitor saddle in my youth. It did thousands of miles when thin leather chamois was the only padding inside the knitted cycle shorts of the day. Add that to the Unica's naked plastic body and longer rides were spent looking for a chance to stand up on the pedals!

Sunday 15th 46F, calm, misty and grey. Some days just seem very odd. Today being Sunday, one would not expect much traffic. Wrong! A convoy of literally dozens of cars passed me nose to tail. The leader deliberately tried to run me down but missed. The rest all swerved to avoid me because they had to. They were all much too close to each other an it was like the dodgems seeing them jerk away from the verge on autopilot. And still they kept coming in smaller numbers.

Perhaps they were giving away free booze in the next village? Talking of which: The McSlob's litter slob has been on holiday. Or perhaps a <cough> crash diet? Or perhaps again, the smashed bottles of vodka on the same stretch of road suggest something darker about the culprit? They are now drink driving to forget their craving for an early death?

The aggressive Coot has moved on from the roadside pond after several years of failing to produce young. His place has been taken by a pair of rather shy Mallards. I have a new bird to identify. It was sitting on a huge tree trunk in the churchyard and calling loudly and insistently above the traffic noise. Small, with smooth, pale grey all over with white cheeks below the eyes. I'm going to have to call it a Nuthatch, from its call, but not its appearance. Too busy for a ride today.

Click on any image for an enlargement.

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